It's the Devil!!!
I watched quietly as the tractor drove toward the plane, with
one lone patient jostling around on the crude wooden platform
on the back. I was on a routine flight up to Kaikan Village,
(or so I thought). Several weeks before I had been asked by
an Amerindian gentleman who works for the Ministry of
Agriculture, if I could fly him and his son over to Kaikan and
Arau Village, so he could fog the Acoushi Ants. The “leaf
cutter” ants were onthe move, and the Villager’s farms were
being decimated. To destroy these nests you have to blow an
insecticide fog deep into the ground to kill the entire nest. No sooner did I touch down, and chop the power, then the
health worker walked up to to the plane and informed me that
Brother Reeves Gomez had just been bitten by the big
Laborea snake. I groaned when I heard the news. Laborea
snakes come in two varieties, big (5-6 ft) and small (10 - 12
inches). Both are dirt brown, which makes them very hard to
spot, and both are hemotoxic, which means that the poison
diffuses through your tissues into your blood stream and
breaks down the platelets in your blood. If untreated, one
could bleed to death internally. Not pretty! But to make matters worse, Reeves is one of our steady
workers on the Bible School Project. In a village in which
most are trying to scratch out an existence, it’s hard to find
workers who will volunteer their time to build a missionary
school. Most spend their time working hard in the gold
mines. But Reeves was one of those few dedicated persons
who wouldn'tgive up on the bible school project.
I knew that this would be a big blow to the project. But what
could be done? As the tractor backed up to the plane I put on
a brave smile and said, “Reeves!! What happened?” He
grimaced in pain and said “It’s the devil! It’s the devil!”
Then he told me the story, “I was walking down the trail, to
get my hacksaw at my house. As I stepped over a log, this
snake bit me. It’s the devil!”
I couldn’t help but agree with him that the Devil was behind
this unfortunately event. From the very beginning the Devil
has masked himself behind the guise of a serpent in his all-
out effort to hurt God’s chosen people. Revelation 12:9 calls
him, “That old serpent”
As we talked a small crowd of villagers gathered around the
tractor to pray for brother Reeves. With much emotion, began
began to talk with his fellow villagers. He talked about the
bible school and how he wanted so much to see it completed,
but unfortunately he had to leave because of the snakebite.
He concluded his emotional exhortation by saying, “...I don’t
know what will happen to me, but it is in the Lord’s hands.”
As I flew him to Kamarang hospital, my mind started
thinking ahead as to what sort of options were available.
Fortunately some kind soul had put an activated charcoal
poultice on the wound within 30 minutes of the bite, but now
I was needing to change the dressing, and I didn’t have any
activated charcoal with me in the airplane.
When I arrived in Kamarang I immediately asked the two
Medex ladies whether they had any activated charcoal at the
clinic. Years ago, some other missionary pilots had
distributed some containers of activated charcoal around to
the different villages, and I was hopeful that there may still
have the bottle stuffed in a corner somewhere. No Luck...
So then I hit on a bright idea. It was the end of dry season,
and people were slashing and burning their farms to get ready
fortheir new crops. So I asked, “Has anyone been burning a
farm close by?” It turned out that they had been burning right
behind the hospital. So we all trooped out the back of the
hospital tosee if we could harvest some of the charred wood.
We picked out a couple pieces that looked good, and I showed
them how they could scrape off the charred areas and crush it
up into charcoal. With a few last careful instructions on how
to make more dressings, I left and flew back to Paruima.
The next day Reeves caught a government flight to
Georgetown where he spent a few days at the government
hospital recovering.
We've encountered more problems with the building of this
bible school in Kaikan. The old serpent knows that if this
school is completed that it will deal a deadly blow to his
kingdom of darkness. So he is doing everything he can, to
try and hinder thework. Please join me in prayers for this
project, and especially for protection for those who work
on it.
| | |  |  Missionaries Wanted We have openings for missionary workers: - Bible Workers to do training and evangelism.
- Construction Workers for different projects around Guyana.
- Media Worker to help run the video and print work.
- Pilots and Mechanics to build up the aviation program.
Fill out an Gospel Ministry International Application today and indicate your interest in Guyana | |  Join the Team If you would like to help the missionary work go forward, you can send a tax deductible donation to: Gospel Ministry International, PO Box 506, Collegedale Tennessee 37315. Kindly write on a separate note that it is for Guyana Aviation Evangelism project (GAVE) | | | |
Of course riding it out on the ground is much better than flying through it! A week ago I rode a stormy updraft that carried me up over 2500 feet in two minutes! 
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